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Logic For Dummies

Before I dive into the post I just want to announce that the laugh-out-loud-funny Valerie and her famed airborne platypus army have bestowed a new blog award upon me. Feast your eyes on this baby:

They see me writin’, they haaaatin’

Those of you who know me will know that I’m known for not knowing how to play by the blog award rules and for writing horrible run-on sentences, so I may or may not pass this award on to 15 other bloggers at some point in a distant future.

I will say, however, that Valerie’s blog is well worth your visit if you ever need a laugh or seventeen. Now, onward.

We just purchased a 22-inch LCD monitor, so that my fiancee can work from home some days. Her laptop screen simply isn’t big enough to accommodate all those graphs, numbers and pictures of our future cats.

Today the monitor arrived, accompanied by an utterly useless instruction leaflet that shows how to attach it to the base.

However, I sincerely hope nobody out there actually requires an instruction like this:

Step 1: Use brain. Step 2: DERP! Step 3: Success

Really? Was this necessary? Come on, this instruction doesn’t tell us anything beyond what could be summed up in a sentence: “Attach the base to the monitor”. Nobody needs a three-step visual diagram for the easiest two-piece jigsaw puzzle in existence.

There is only one detail of the above assembly process that may, hypothetically, cause some people issues: knowing which exact recess of the base the monitor fits into. Notice how the instruction leaflet does nothing to address that. Instead, it patronisingly tells us what we must already know.

Have you come across similarly useless instructions? Instructions that were too complicated to understand? Wrong instructions? Instructions that defy logic? IKEA instructions, which can be all of the above?

We just got a new smoke/carbon monoxide detector, and it came with an instruction page measuring 19″ x 24″ that was filled with tiny writing. One of my favorite sentences was: “Do not connect this unit to any other alarm or auxiliary device”. Seriously? We usually just slap a battery in that bad boy and stick it on the ceiling. Apparently, there are a bunch of smoke alarm over-achievers out there.

Having recieved the advice of “just slow down,” for screwing up simple instructions due to rabid dyslexia, I appreciate that you included the recipe. Yet I can still understand the lunacy of “do not swallow” on hemmroid cream.

As someone who is useless at constructing anything, I rather like the idiot-proof instructions. After saying this, I did think that the “do not swallow” instruction on my hemorrhoid cream was going a bit too far!

Whenever I’m confronted by pictorial instructions, I feel as though I’m a kid again, studying one of those ‘Find 8 things that are different between these two pictures’ games. I peer at the sketches, wondering, “Have I got this thing upside down? Wait, are those two holes maybe a little closer together in the sketch? Oh, that means it’s right-side-up… wait, no…”

Awesome, I can’t wait to make that recipe! Grab spaghetti noodles, bring them closer and closer to the pot, and ta da, it will all turn magically into Spaghetti Bolognese! Although I may have a few questions…hmmm.

I don’t like the trend of many instructions being in picture form now. I would much rather read the words, but much of the time now, they don’t even give you that option anymore.